Book excerpt: Debbie Kiley is a survivor. Thrust into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean after a shipwreck, adrift for days in a rubber dinghy in shark-infested waters, Kiley survived, while three of her shipmates died before her eyes. Her story, in large part, is about the superhuman feats of endurance the body is capable of in order to continue to exist. But Kiley did not just survive shipwreck. She had also survived a childhood of abuse, neglect, bulimia, drugs, rejection, and lovelessness. Her twenty-four years before the shipwreck were also about survival - survival of her soul, her psyche, her sanity. Faced with harrowing and horrific situations most of us cannot even imagine, Kiley did more than merely survive; she triumphed. And more importantly, she learned. In this book, she tells her story and explains how it taught her the ten lessons she has learned for survival - lessons that anyone can learn, should learn, must learn. Because as Kiley writes, "To die well, we must have lived well and not have given up."